Friday, 24 July 2015

How does a writer deal with the psychological trauma that war
imposes on a hapless people? How does a writer respond to two young army
colonels – Emeka Ojukwu and Yakubu Gowon, who, not being able to manage their
personal egos, resort to war to test out their wills and therefore subject
their people to the horrors of war? What does an author make of the carnage of
human lives sent too early to their graves? What happens to the countless dead?
To what degenerate levels can man sink when faced with the tragic consequences
of war? These must have been some of the thoughts that went through Wole
Soyinka’s mind when he wrote the cynical play Madmen and Specialists.

These issues were also
played out before a packed audience when it was performed last Sunday at Terra
Kulture by PAWS Production and directed by Kenneth Uphopho. There is a repeat performance
of the play today at 3pm and 6pm.

It is the Nigerian
Civil war of 1967-1970 and just about the time the playwright Soyinka was also
imprisoned for 22 months while the war ragged and the innocent and hapless
Biafrans (Igbo) were being pummelled by the federal forces. While Soyinka
emerged from prison with The Man Died,
his prison memoir, he couldn’t turn away from the grim realities of a senseless
war on account of which he went to prison in the first instance. The result of
his views on the war is what Madmen and
Specialists is about.

Bero (Patrick Diabua)
is a doctor of sorts who goes to war and is soon converted into intelligence
unit. His father, too, joins the war and, stunned by the orgy of violence and
countless dead, devices an ingenuous way of dealing with the situation. Rather
than allow the dead to go to waste, he begins to preach the philosophy of
cannibalism, turning the dead into meat and actually savouring the human flesh.
After all, when other animals are killed they are eaten. Why not humans who are
killed by the willful acts of man? Bero, too, becomes a convert to his father’s
morbid taste.

Meanwhile, Siberu is
Bero’s sister who is made to keep the home front while the men are gone to war.
She keeps her brother’s medical paraphernalia of herbal materials going and
piles up some more while he is away. She has the assistance of two elderly
women, who also versed the art of herbs. In fact, they serve as counterpoise to
the war’s ravage and wreck, as earth mothers whose role it is to preserve the
fragile earth on which destruction is being visited by the war. They are the
ones who, while Bero and his father are away at war, help Siberu to maintain
sanity and focus and the probable loss of the two men in her life to wat.

Meanwhile, Bero had
detailed a group of beggars, who carry various war scars, to keep watch over
Siberu and her activities and the earth women. The beggars are also Bero’s
father’s eyes and ears. Bero and his father, who he secrets away at his
laboratory after suffering the psychological blow of war, are locked in the
ideological contest of ‘AS’, as the symbol of all knowledge and the morality
otherwise of the method chosen to execute their scheme. In exasperation, Bero
kills his father to end what has obviously become a mad proposition.

On account of the
complexity of the play that deploys the typical Soyinkaen language that goes round and round in confusing circles,
the producers had to intervene in a question and answer session to further
throw light on the play. This produced its own hilarious moments both for the packed
audience and the cast. Also heartwarming was that the performance of Madmen and Specialists during the long
break the hall filled to capacity with guests; it somewhat gives a lie to a poor
appreciation of live performances charged against Nigerians. The producers
would pleasurably delighted should they record such massive audience attendance
in the two shows billed for today to bring Soyinka’s Madmen and Specialists’ performance to an end.

IT is not just because she is also a woman. It isn’t also
because she is a medical doctor, an ophthalmologist. It is simply because the
conditions of women Dr. Mbadugha address in her first collection of short
stories are rampant, entrenched in society and continue to cause headache to
many women. It is also because much as these issues or practices harm women,
positive attitude towards eradicating them seems elusive and women continue to
suffer conditions not of their own making. These are the concerns she exposes in
Beyond the Trial.

Widowhood, teenage
pregnancy and wife-beating are some of the issues still militating against the
ability of some women to develop to their full capacities and contribute
meaningfully to society. Many women continue to reel under the yoke of painful
widowhood rites combined with lack of written wills made by husbands to provide
for their loved ones. This renders many wives penniless in the hands of greedy
in-laws. And then how do young girls escape the trap of teenage pregnancy so
they could aspire to their highest levels of personal achievements?

These issues came to
the fore recently at the presentation of Mbadugha’s debut collection at Institute
of Medical Research, Yaba, Lagos. Mbadugha is insistent that society continues
to ignore the cries of women who suffer the failure of their men to provide for
the future through making a will that curtails the incursion of extended family
members to deny them their entitlement when the man is no longer there to
provide and defend his family. She called on men to stop the age-old practice of
swooping on the wealth of the deceased and denying bereaved women of their
husband’s property, which hinders the wellbeing of such women as well as the
education of their children.

In a form of
advocacy, Mbadugha has taken to writing about these nagging issues to further
raise awareness about them in society. The issues are as psychological as they
are medical and Mbadugha said society’s health is at stake when a section of it
is continuously put under stress that has implication for the entire society.

“I wrote Beyond the Trial with young adults and
parents in mind. It’s about how relationships, friendships can affect young
people negatively, especially when they cannot confide in the adults in their
lives. It’s a book of inspiration for young ones to be able to open up to their
parents on things bordering them. It’s hopeful and reflective about our
situations. It’s also for parents to be close to their children and how through
such closeness they can help young people steer the right path”.

She also composed a
theme song for the book which she sang with gusto at the event to the
admiration of guests. She sang it to the accompaniment of music from a keyboard
and saxophone.

Chairman of the event
and former Lagos State Commissioner for Health Dr. Leke Pitan commended the
medical practitioner for finding time to write. According to him, “We have seen
another facet of Mbadugha. You’re a multifaceted, talented, disciplinary
person. Given our profession, that is a rarity. We doctors just face it. The
training requires that you don’t veer off from medicine. Many don’t believe
medicine should be mixed with mundane things as the arts. They feel something
must give.

“I’m highly
impressed. But not surprised. Mentally, Mbadugha is way beyond average. You are
a pride to the medical profession. There’s a lot to learn from you and your
book. I hope many more of us can borrow a leaf from her and show the many
facets of us in the medical profession. We look forward to a CD from you”.

Other medical
professionals in attendance also praised Mbadugha for her efforts in writing a
book well outside the medical profession that deals with real time societal
issues that plague many, young and old. Those present included Profs. Onakoya,
Adefule, Ositelu Akinsola, Ibidapo, Dr. Ogechi Nwokedi, who read an excerpt
from the book, author’s husband, Prof. Joseph Mbadugha, gospel singer Olufunmi Olajoyegbe and her husband, John Osakwe,
Dr. Hope Iloka.

For the second year Ijegba forest beings were stirred awake in moonlight-like
performance enactment to salute the solitary human occupant Wole Soyina who
recently turned 81 in Abeokuta. Although there were no women clad in white who
held aloft oil lamps like last year to lend eerie feel to the forest and light
the way for the invaders of this forest, the slight rain early in the evening
rendered the narrow bush path slippery and cagey. It ensured that the
audience-invaders of the 80-capacity Ijegba Forest Amphi-Theatre who had come
to see the performance of Kongi’s Harvest
shared with Soyinka what it felt to live well apart from others in constricted
city spaces.
Indeed, remarks by Soyinka’s son Makin, who also spots a mane almost
comparable to his father’s, and echoing his inimitable father, said only a
madman like Alhaji Teju Kareem would conceive the idea of carving out a theatre
out of the forest and that only another madman would think of staging Kongi’s Harvest in theatre carved out of
a forest and a valley. And it didn’t come as a surprise, especially in an
environment in which ideas seem in abundance but short on execution on account
of a myriad of real or imagined challenges that plague many in Nigeria’s social
space.
But Kareem has carved an enduring theatre melded into a sloping,
undulating forest landscape that challenges the imagination, or in fact, on
which imagination soars, as the actors did, especially the Organising Secretary
(Akrah Joy), who, as the sustaining soul of Kongi’s power mongering, bestrode
the entire stage rampant with fascinating ease and delivery until her guile is
thwarted at the moment of triumph for her boss Kongi and things go awry. She
has to take to her heels to avoid the rage stirred by the attempted
assassination of Kongi.
And just like A Dance of the
Forests staged last year when Soyinka turned landmark 80, Kongi’s Harvest couldn’t have found a
better stage magic than the one Zmirage Multimedia Ltd conjured for it at Ijegba Forest Theatre. Although while
the costumes for A Dance of the Forests
lent themselves better and melded with the stage carved out of the Ijegba
forest on account of the other-worldly beings that peopled the play, the same
forest setting actually lent Kongi’s
Harvest the primal ambience of power manipulation, power theft and power
usurpation and its dark, ritual transfer from the true owners to pretenders to
the throne through devious subterfuge.

That was the magic
of Kongi’s Harvest on the night of
Soyinka’s 81st birthday celebration expressed in Wole Soyinka International
Cultural Exchange (WSICE) by the duo Kareem and Prof. Segun Ojewuyi, former
students of Soyinka who have turned the symbolism of the global icon into a
yearly cultural fiesta and tourism item that draws people from far and near to
Abeokuta in celebration.

Set in the era when
power usurpation was rampant in parts of Africa, including Nigeria, Kongi’s Harvest

EARLIER, Samson Apata opened the evening soon after the rain petered out with
his Yoruba ewi poetry chant that
stirred the audience. Then came Efe Paul Azino, whose deft spoken word poetry
delivery left many breathless in its precise articulation of the Soyinka
mystique. Titled ‘Storyteller,’ the piece encapsulates the Soyinka essence as a
storyteller both in the literary and literal senses of his engagement as a
writer blazoning words across the horizon and his pursuit of justice and sane
society.
Co-Executive Producer of Wole Soyinka International Cultural Exchange
(WSICE) 2015 and Head of Directing at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale,
U.S. Prof. Ojewuyi bemoaned the crass idiocy masquerading as leadership that
strut Nigeria’s landscape and how refreshing it is that a personality like
Soyinka is at the forefront of putting things right with the noble ideals he
represents and expouses.
According to him, “We live in a country where we have a barrage of
negative things obstructing our country. But we still have people who have
vision and are ready to move the country forward. Soyinka isn’t just a Nobel
laureate; he is the embodiment of our humanity”.

ALSO, Soyinka in his address to the 81
students that competed in the yearly essay contest titled ‘To the July 13 ‘Class of
81’, bid the children welcome to his home even in his absence. The poet and
dramatist still harped on the missing Chibok schoolgirls and asked the young
ones to stand up the barbarism the Boko
Haram extremists stands for and reject it in its entirety.

As he put it, “Whether we choose to admit it
or not, we are assailed by one of the most ruthless enemies of humanity that
the nation has ever known. It must be an extremely lucky individual among you
from several parts of the North who has not lost a family member, a friend, a
mentor, or even acquaintance to the forces of death and destruction known as Boko Haram.

“Islam
is a religion that is famous for its love of the Book, indeed, the early
followers of that faith were known as ‘the people of the Book’. Famous Islamic
scholars have stood guardian at the portals of institutions of learning such as
the Library of Alexandria. From time immemorial, they pushed forward the
frontiers of learning, authored timeless works that today fill the vaults of
the famous libraries of Timbuktu which barbarians like Ansar Dine have sought
to destroy. Islamic scholars are leading lights in that mission of expanding
the mind, a mission that has resulted in your coming together from all corners
of the nation, fostering the togetherness of youth across gender, faith, and
accident of birth. These pioneers confronted and denounced diverse apostles of
ignorance and divisiveness, upholding the exhortations of great Islamic
teachers such as Abbas Mahmoud El Akkad who declared that “applying the mind is
an Islamic duty”, and that using one’s mental faculty is an obligation for all
Moslems”.

Sunday, 19 July 2015

(Interview by ANOTE AJELUOROU published in The Guardian
on occasion of Fred Agbeyegbe’s 76th birthday in 2011)

YOU ACTUALLY STUDIED LAW BUT YOUR INVOLVEMENT
IN THE THEATRE TENDS TO HAVE OVER–SHADOWED THAT WHAT INFORMED THE DIRECTION, OR
CO- DIRECTIONS, IN FACT?

Within
the Nigerian context, my fame, as it is, may have come from theatre because
that is the place you easily get public applause. But I don’t think I have been
any less a lawyer in the sense that I have practised law without any break in
terms of number of years, I’ve been in more legal situations than I’ve been in
theatrical projects. That might be difficult to believe. But, of course, one, I
mean the theatre, is more attractive of popular acclaim than the other.
The other is done within the sacrosanct walls of a court. I was brought
up as a lawyer not to advertise, I think I’ve stepped within those
bounds. A good number of people perhaps don’t know that I read Law.
They are more likely to describe me first as a writer or a journalist, which
I’m not, although I write, I think you need a number of attributes to be called
a journalist. In spite of my having had columns in the papers, I still
don’t regard myself as a journalist.

YOU WRITING CAREER IS ADJUDGED
IMPRESSIVE. HOW DID IT COME INTO YOU? IT WASN’T HAPPENSTANCE, WAS
IT?

It
can’t be called happenstance because of the length of my life; I’ve been
involved in it. But it has been the joy of my life; I’ve gone after it
deliberately. But one can trace its origin to youthful exuberance,
especially in those days when upbringing dictates that you must show
commitment, usefulness.

Even as
young persons, you must be a role model; and I think it’s the absence of
consistent role modeling on the part of today’s leaders that has brought
Nigeria to where it is today. When I was young, it was almost compulsory to
show that you have God-given gifts, that you have talents and you’re prepared
to use them for the benefit of society. We were made to write a play, which I
did at the age of 14. A welfare lady, who was in charge of my area in Warri, my
hometown, set us to it. She was very creative, and she wanted us to be
creative as well. She encouraged us to do things; to be proactive and to
be ready to be useful members of society, as it were. The belief was not
anything less at the time that the youths of today are the leaders of
tomorrow. Today, they say it more flippantly than they said it then; but
it means a lot and we imbibed it. So, I wrote a play at 14; it wasn’t
happenstance. It was an annual activity for youth club.

COULD THAT BE THE PLAY, THE KING MUST DANCE
NAKED?

The one
I wrote at 14 was not published. But it attracted its own level of
interest, which it generated all over the place. We were British subjects
at the time and subject matter was to do, funnily enough, with what effectively
was the burial ground of the English royal family – Westminister Abbey. I
got there eventually at my adult age; but at the time, I knew nothing about it
other than what I saw on an almanac on the wall. Subsequent plays before The
King Must Dance Naked were many: The Reincarnation Lovers,
which was broadcast on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), The
Will, Competition Forever – all came before it. The King
Must Dance Naked was my debutant play in Nigeria, and because of the
time and what was happening in the theatre world, it gave it some impetus in
that for some of those who were here before I got back from the U.K, theatre
was dead. There was this big edifice, the National Theatre, in which next
to nothing was happening. I remember, in fact, Dr. Ola Balogun was incensed at
the then director of the National Theatre for participating in the plays of Ajo
Productions, Jide Ogungbade and my humble self at the time following the
success of The King Must Dance Naked.

INCENSED, TO WHAT EFFECT?

He
actually wrote an article on it, his review of the play. But he didn’t
confine it to the play, saying the play was fantastic play, that it was good
for English theatre and drama; but he went on a barrage against the National
Theatre director – I can’t remember his name now – saying all he used the
theatre for was for American films; that he didn’t give theatre practitioners
opportunity to use the place to do the sort of thing that Ajo Productions and
Fred Agbeyegbe had just done. How dare he come to participate in the
glory of something that was good for the theatre. It was really incredible. But
that was the trend of the comment at the time, actually. That was why everybody
believed that Ajo Productions, The King Must Dance Naked and Fred
Agbeyegbe, the three of them, all came to enliven the National Theatre.
And thereafter, we never looked back until many years ago when the Federal
Government tried to sell it off.

THERE WAS THE AJO PRODUCTIONS PLAY SERIES THAT
SPANNED MANY YEARS. HOW DID YOU SUSTAIN THE FESTIVAL FOR SO LONG?

It was
sheer madness (laughs)… I remember Prof. Femi Osofisan came to one of our
events in Abuja, when the head of Department of Theatre Arts, Ibadan, came to
review my book, a play, Woe unto Death at the National University
Commission Conference Centre, and we put up the play as well.
Coincidenally, Osofisan was in town; so he came to see the play. It was
the beginning of my escapade in trying to make Abuja not to be a weekend ghost
town. It was where they do their business, do their politics, but by
Thursday everybody is rushing out. That is why I call it madness.

But I
said that wasn’t good enough. This is meant to be the capital of Nigeria
with all the diplomatic community, who find themselves left alone in someone
else’s town or capital every weekend. And, since they seem to understand and
enjoy theatre more than the average Nigerian, we thought that we could get
something like that going, that it would interest them; that it would bring
about some change and make Abuja more lively.

BUDISO APPEARS TO BE THE MOST POLITICAL OF YOUR
PLAYS; AND THEN IT WAS WRITTEN AND PERFORMED DURING THE MILITARY ERA. HOW DID
YOU MANAGE TO GET AWAY WITH IT?

Again,
this was before 1986, when the legal profession was 100 years old in Nigeria.
So the NBA commissioned me to write a play as part of the celebration or
commemoration of 100 years of legal practice in Nigeria. And I came up with a
play called BUDISO. BU stands for Buhari; DI stands for Idiagbon,
and SO stands for Sowemimo. And again, coincidentally, when put literally
together in Yoruba, ‘budiso’ means ‘grab your arse’ That’s why in the play,
when you hear ‘Budiso’ people grab their arse. It depicts the unacceptability
of the mangling of laws by the courts, albeit under the military regime.
BUDISO is a farce but it reflects an era in the Nigeria bench/bar
relationship.

IN SPEAKING TO SOME OF THOSE WHO ACTED IN YOUR
PLAYS, ALLUSION WAS MADE TO A STRONG OF SENSE OF ITSEKIRI HISTORY IN THEM. WAS
THAT A CONSCIOUS UNDERTAKING?

Well,
that’s part of what’s going on in this country. I was an Itsekiri man before I
became a Nigerian. In fact, I was naturally an Itsekiri man; I became a
Nigerian by accident. And after seeing the way it has gone, I regretted being a
Nigerian, detests being a Nigerian, because of what I have been put through.
But that bit about being Itsekiri, I didn’t have a choice; that’s how the good
lord made me and put me in Itsekiri land. So, my custom, my traditions, my
comings and goings, the things that I knew as I grew up, the first language I
spoke in my life is Itsekiri.

Then
you have this imposition. Here I am; the construction of the country I belong
to says, in effect, there are four languages as lingua franca: English, but you
can use Igbo, Hausa, and Yoruba. None of those four languages is my language.

Although
it has been said, and I believe it is so, that my plays are universally
applicable, either in their nuances or in the ways of life. I can only better
relate to those things in life when I want to put them across to other people
the best way I understand them. So, in the plays, the names are largely
Itsekiri names; the costumes; the traditions are largely Itsekiri traditions.

For
instance, in a scene where a king dies and another is going to be put on the
throne, I can’t put what they do in Sokoto or Owerri; it’s what they do in
Warri, what they do in Itsekiri land. Where I come from featured.

As I
always say, if Moses wrote the bible in Warri, Itsekiri, Urhobo or Ijaw will be
in it but he did not (laughs). The bible carries the language of the person who
put it down.

Everything
after that is interpretation but those interpretation are linguistic interpretations.
You could not interpret Galili by writing Liverpool there; so Galili is Galili
and it remains so in the bible, Jordan is Jordan as it is written down even
when you and I read it in the English language. So, that is what Itsekiri
traditions, history and language are doing in my plays.